Privacy, Affiliate Links, Cookies: This site uses cookies, including to identify the country you are visiting from and to measure traffic to third-party sites.

I invest a lot of time and money into running this site, and I use affiliate links to help get a little of this money back. If you click on an affiliate link and purchase anything, I will receive a small commission. These affiliate providers use cookies to understand the referrals I've made and whether an ad was shown. These cookies do not reveal your identity, web use, or other behaviour.

By continuing to use this site, you agree to the use of cookies. To learn more about what cookies are stored and how they're used, you can find my Privacy Policy here:
Privacy Policy

By using some of these links, you're helping to keep Dani Reviews Things up and running. Thank you!

Star rating: Heat rating:

The powerful story of two teenagers finding friendship, comfort, and first love in the days following 9/11 as their fractured city tries to put itself back together.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, sixteen-year-old Kyle Donohue watches the first twin tower come down from the window of Stuyvesant High School. Moments later, terrified and fleeing home to safety across the Brooklyn Bridge, he stumbles across a girl perched in the shadows. She is covered in ash and wearing a pair of costume wings. With his mother and sister in California and unable to reach his father, a New York City detective likely on his way to the disaster, Kyle makes the split-second decision to bring the girl home. What follows is their story, told in alternating points of view, as Kyle tries to unravel the mystery of the girl so he can return her to her family. But what if the girl has forgotten everything, even her own name? And what if the more Kyle gets to know her, the less he wants her to go home? The Memory of Things tells a stunning story of friendship and first love and of carrying on with our day-to-day living in the midst of world-changing tragedy and unforgettable pain—it tells a story of hope.

DNF @ 53%

Tbh, this was a quick read up until this point, but I stopped and I just don’t really want to go back. I have no interest in it anymore and it is because of way it was written. This one states that there are alternating points of view — and there are, but it is regular prose for Kyle’s point of view and then purple prose in a lyrical way for the girl. And it was so jarring to go from the regular prose to this weird poem right in the middle with no warning. At first I was like “wtf is this, did they screw up the eARC” but no it was just the way it was written. Just thinking about going back to read that is blah to me.

On top of that, I thought that while Kyle was really interesting and a pretty good guy overall, I just didn’t care about him or anyone else. I didn’t care that his dad was at Ground Zero or his mom was in LA. I was so numb and apathetic while reading this one. And it was about a really terrible thing! The bombings were horrible and I can remember them happening but I just did not care. I felt as though we were told that this terrible thing happened and then immediately removed from it so I just stopped thinking about the characters in relation to that, if that makes sense.

In the same vein, I thought the world building for this was really lacking. I find that when an author includes a tragic event that has happened in our present society, they exclude details of things that they would normally include if they were writing about a fictional tragedy that they added in. And that was definitely the case here. We got some details about the ash and the bridge being closed and how loud it sounded when the building fell, but it wasn’t enough to really put me in Kyle’s shoes, to feel his fear, to understand his worry, or anything like that. It was the bare bones of the tragedy rather than getting into the gritty details, which made it hard for me to connect with Kyle that way.

I did like that it was only going to take place over the course of the immediate days following the tragedy — and I have heard that the ending gives you hope for the future. But I just don’t care enough to go back and finish it. I wanted something a little darker with some lightness to it rather than this. Also I just couldn’t handle the girl’s POV. I couldn’t.

Follow me

Ways to subscribe

Like what you see?

Star ratings

0: Couldn't finish1: Want my precious reading hours back2: Could have done without it3: It was good, but it's not an essential read4: Really liked it and glad I picked it up5: Absolutely loved it and would read again

Things I’ve said

Disclaimer

Unless otherwise stated, I do not claim ownership of any images or other media.

Dani Reviews Things is a participant in the Amazon EU Associates Programme, an affiliate advertising programme designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.co.uk.

Dani Reviews Things is also part of The Book Depository's affiliate program.